Climate Alarm

In its new report on the risks from human-caused climate change, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sets climate science back rather than “advancing” it. The report, counterfactuallytitled “What We Know,” is more an account of what the scientific community thought it knew about a decade ago than an up-to-date telling of current understanding.

Not surprisingly, the group ignores the fact that climate science is moving in a direction that increasingly suggests that the risk of extreme climate change is lower than has been previously assessed. Instead, the AAAS continues to play up the chance of extreme outcomes with the intent of scaring us into taking action — action that would have little impact on either future climate change or the risks therefrom.

The AAAS largely appeals to its own authority in trying to persuade us to believe its conclusions and yet informs its authority with old and obsolete science.

Nowhere is this more true than in its justification for highlighting the risks of “abrupt climate change” and in its faith in the ability of climate models to provide reliable and informed guidance regarding the probability of extreme climate changes’ occurring in the future.

The new report asserts:

Below are some of the high-side projections and tail risks we incur by following the current path for CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. Most of these projections derive from computer simulations of Earth and its climate system. These models apply the best understanding science has to offer about how our climate works and how it will change in the future. There are many such models and all of them have been validated, to varying degrees, by their ability to replicate past climate changes.

However, the best and most recent science shows the AAAS assessment to be outdated and badly misplaced. In fact, climate models have done remarkably poorly in replicating the evolution of global temperature during the past several decades, and high-end climate-change scenarios from the models are largely unsupported by observations.

A host of other prominent papers that have examined the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse-gas emissions collectively suggest that not only is future global warming likely to be less than previously expected, but, and perhaps more important, the outside chance that it will be extremely large has shrunk dramatically. This position is further supported by new research that downplays the threat of abrupt climate change from Arctic methane release, a shutdown of the Gulf Stream, and rapid sea-level rise.

Instead of an informed report by the esteemed group focused on presenting what today’s best science tells us regarding the risks from extreme climate change and our ability to mitigate them, what we got from the AAAS was a textbook example of climate alarmism: link human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions to climate change, raise the possibility that climate change will be disastrous, and then tell us we have to act now to save ourselves.

The first part of the AAAS guide to climate alarm is certainly true: Human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions do put pressure on the climate to warm. But the most important details — to what degree and of what character — are still uncertain and are being intensely studied and debated.

The second part has been relegated to the realm of climate fantasy. Today’s leading science suggests that coming human-caused climate change is going to be less than expected, with a much-diminished associated risk of abrupt changes with catastrophic outcomes.

Which means that the third part — that immediate action is required to reduce the risk of extreme change — is largely inapplicable (and such action is likely to be ineffective to boot).

The new AAAS report runs up climate alarm but runs down climate science. The result is a misleading document that is aimed at influencing public policy. This is the situation that should be raising alarm.

47 thoughts on “Climate Alarm”

The reason I suspect they kept screaming “we must act now!” is because they knew full well that the standstill was in motion (see Phil Jones CRU acknowledgment 2005?). The longer it goes on the less likelihood of CAGW and inaction would be in. Just my 2 cents.

“There are many such models and all of them have been validated, to varying degrees, by their ability to replicate past climate changes.”

Say what? I grow weary of this tactic. Most people (and reporters) ‘speed read’ things like this and, depending on their current perceptions, will skip over the “to varying degrees” phrase and repeat that “ALL CLIMATE MODELS HAVE BEEN 100% VALIDATED”. I grow tired of the weasel wording that leads the casual reader to erroneous conclusions. I’d love to see AAAS publish a table that shows each model in the CHIP3 ensemble (I presume that’s what they are talking about) and its corresponding ‘degree of validation’. Of course, I know that no such information exists because none of those models have been ‘validated’ in the sense used by real scientists and people who actually use feedback models for a living. The idea that changing the ‘tunable parameters’ of a model (especially when there are 10+) so that it regurgitates past temperature doesn’t tell me a thing about whether that model can produce reliable projections of the future state of the climate. Really, it doesn’t.

In my opinion , this statement by the AAAS tells me that they are NOT interested in the advancement of science, even in the slightest. They are living proof of Eisenhower’s admonition in his farewell address, “In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

The ‘Scientific Elite’ has to produce what the government funding their research whats to hear or they won’t get any money to continue their research. I think that, contrary to Eisenhower’s fears, it is the ‘Scientific Elite’ that has become captive of public policy rather than the reverse.

I think it could take a few more years, probably after a major political change in the US federal government relieves investigators of the valid worry their grants would be targeted for “special scrutiny” (as in what the IRS has done) if the publicly express dissent from the “settled science” mantra. If enough internal pressure is applied from members and 2014 continues the pause this a trickle will turn to a flood of walk-backs by scientists concerned for their reputation.

From the report:
“Extreme weather is not just an abstract concept. It is a reality that affects people across the country. In 2013, two out of three Americans said weather in the U.S. has been worse over the past several years, up 12 percentage points since spring 2012. Many (51%) say weather in their local area has been worse over the past several years. Not surprisingly, then, the gap between what we know as scientists (that global warming impacts are here and now) and what Americans perceive is narrowing: about six in 10 Americans already say, “global warming is affecting weather in the U.S.””

So anecdotal evidence is now considered valid science? And 51% qualifies as many?

The new improved, all singing, all dancing IPCC report is due out in the next few days confidently forecasting Thermageddon.

Not surprisingly, all sorts of BS is coming out now, trying to attach itself to the coat tails of the IPCC’s terrifying tale. For example, the BBC is trumpeting (that is an understatement) some arrant rubbish about some hydrothermal generated CO2 vents in the ocean floor acidifying the ocean and killing corals. The fact that all hydrothermal vents are acidic (sulphuric) and if you supersaturate any environment (gas or liquid) with CO2 all life will perish is ignored in order to make a totally fallacious point about supposed ocean acidification.

Never forget the Climate Industry thrives on grants and government largesse, without which our planet’s climate would just carry on doing its own thing with nothing for anyone to worry about.

This is all about being out there at the appropriate moment with the begging bowl.

eburke93 says:
March 27, 2014 at 2:00 pm
I hope AAAS will follow up with two new campaigns, one entitled “What We Know, But Are Not Telling You” and another called “All the Stuff We Really Don’t Yet Know.” But I won’t hold my CO2.

That second one would be too long to publish. It would have to come in its own library building, with dimensional pathways in L-space like the one at the Unseen University in Discworld. It still might not be able to accommodate a missive on “ALL THE THINGS SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW”. Of course, then there is the even larger volume (a la Rumsfeld) of “ALL THE THINGS SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW THAT IT DOES NOT KNOW”. That one will be hard to write as we really don’t know what we don’t know, but if we did (and didn’t explode in the resulting paradox) it would probably be the longest book (we didn’t know was) ever written!.

And you wanna know what is the PERFECT counter to this, as far as communicating our message to any average voter? “COLDEST WINTER IN 100 YEARS!!!” And that’s all. If they’re really interested, show them the simple chart, and then stop talking. One simple picture destroys years of studies and thousands of words of explanations.

Who cares if it’s not a perfectly accurate representation of the big picture? Not your average voter, that’s for sure.

Once upon a time, a small group of pot bellied silver haired men sat at a round table plotting the greatest myth known to mankind ( CO2 as a ghg) .and how that bull$#%t would be a spring-board to the biggest land-grab in north america’s history after the genocide of the indigenous people’s that once walked this land. That small group of men are The Club of Rome.

expect a flood of alarmism in the run up to the climate change meeting.

The Scientific Debate On Global Warming In One Chart
Powell combed through the papers and found only two that rejected the idea that humans are responsible for climate change.
“On the one side, we have a mountain of scientific evidence, on the other, ideology and arm-waving,” Powell writes.

AAAS is among the official bodies offering fat ridicule targets faster than I can write essays about them for the next book on climate and energy. So many choices, so little time…Polar bears aren’t even a species, let alone going extinct. Mismanaged Pacific Northwest cultured estuarine oysters threatened by natural coastal upwellings. Catastrophic Eemian sea level rise caused by earthquakes. Smoking volcanoes that do not inject stratospheric aerosols. Northwest Passage shrinking ice that trapped 2013 vessels ( it was worse than the Ship of Fools, just under-reported since even more embarrassing.)
AGW is the satirical gift keeps on giving.

Good point. I think the real crux here is people say weather is worse, is because of a committed, relentless media focus on weather extremes in the press. There is never any historical graph showing the current whatever (heat wave, drought, tornado,snow, hurricane… ) in context.

They are just trying to scare people with weather. Fortunately those like Anthony, Pielkes, and us older folks with longer memories are present to counter such alarmism.

My son gave me a book from 1943 from the USDA, “Climate and Man”. Looking at the temperature records from 1920s -1942, I see that despite all the alleged warming, I still can’t plant tomatoes reliably in northern Illinois before Memorial day ! Old books are a cultural memory bank. Hard to do politically correct revisionism.

Taphonomic says:
March 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm

From the report:
“Extreme weather is not just an abstract concept. It is a reality that affects people across the country. In 2013, two out of three Americans said weather in the U.S. has been worse over the past several years, up 12 percentage points since spring 2012. Many (51%) say weather in their local area has been worse over the past several years. Not surprisingly, then, the gap between what we know as scientists (that global warming impacts are here and now) and what Americans perceive is narrowing: about six in 10 Americans already say, “global warming is affecting weather in the U.S.””

So anecdotal evidence is now considered valid science? And 51% qualifies as many?

Owen in Ga:
You are absolutely correct to point out the impossibility writing “All the Stuff We Really Don’t Yet Know.” Replace that with a new suggestion for an AAAS publication – “All the Stuff We Were So Sure of at One Time, but which Turned Out to Be False.”

The Weather Channel is in a struggle for viewership now after being dumped by DirecTV. SO they need weather “disasters” and big storms to drive remaining viewers. Same with CNN as we saw with Hurr Sandy in ’12. They all need alarmist rhetoric to drive viewership. The problem is alarmism fatigue and public apathy toward such rhetoric is rapidly growing not just in the US but in Europe and Australia as well. Cold winters don’t help the alarmists with public opinion of course, but from a skeptical science standpoint, we can’t do what we see happen all too often with the AGW alarmists, that is to trumpet individual weather events as evidence of climate change.

“Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used
to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a
longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you
might expect from La Nina etc.”

“Greenhouse gases have supercharged the climate just as steroids supercharged hitting in
Major League Baseball.”

They surely must be referring to the plant world, as the proven law of photosynthesis and key role of increasing CO2, gives plants the ability to make more food and grow like they are “on steroids”……………..which numerous studies show is happening.

Interesting how this greenhouse gas=climate change connection has taken on a link where there is none. I have looked at tornadoes, drought, hurricanes, mid latitude cyclones and don’t see it, in fact, just the opposite on elements that have less energy from high latitude warming and a a weaker meridional temp gradient.

The real puzzler is how can climate change continue to accelerate over a decade after the global warming stopped?

Since the warming from CO2 stopped or at the very least has not been anything to worry about the last 15 years ago, how the heck is the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere communicating the message to our climate to cause all these extreme weather events without doing it thru significant warming?

Must be similar to how the hidden heat got into the deep oceans without first passing thru the upper levels.

Seriously, this is more powerful evidence of politics at play.

Science incorporates new information and adjusts accordingly to where the data leads the scientist.

Politics does the opposite. When the new information contradicts the message, the marketing strategy to win the battle must be ramped up to overcome the inconvenience of contradicting empirical data.

This is why just this year we’ve heard Dr. Holdren insist that global warming, now causes extreme cold and John Kerry telling us that climate change is the worst threat facing humanity and Obama ramping up his message and actions to fight carbon pollution……………..because it isn’t happening.

Everything is now caused by climate change. I will say one thing that for sure is caused by LACK of climate change…………………..lying.

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Next:
“Most of these projections derive from computer simulations of Earth and its climate system.”

Most? What are the others derived from? Cheerio boxes? Cheerios (much against expectation) are like alarming climate disaster predictions: they are lightweight, go round and round and are full of holes.

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Next:
What does AAAAAAS mean?

A-a-a-a-a-a…Science?

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Next:
There’s all the stuff we know.
There’s all the stuff we think we know.
There’s all the stuff we think we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we are pretty sure we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we are pretty darned sure we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we really know we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we will in future know that we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we might never know that we don’t know.
There’s all the stuff we will never know whether or not we will ever know that we don’t know.
There’s some other stuff we will just never know about what we don’t know, let alone know it.

This got me wondering. I have a lot of spirited debates with a good friend about this stuff. His big weapon is the belief that the Climate Alarmists are “true scientists” and that their version of reality is supported by 97 percent of the scientific community and the opposition is just a bunch of oil funded weathermen. OK…I know the arguments against this stuff. No need to regurgitate the old defenses. So here is my question…

What, exactly, have the Alarmist scientists done or predicted that has been proven out? In other words, other than having seized the position of the official voice of climate change in the eyes of a lot of people, what have they been right about? Objectively, what makes them deserve this elevated position of authority?

“The results make this winter look surprisingly average”
“And who knows, by 2100—when average temperatures in the U.S. might be as much as 11 F higher if nothing is done to slow greenhouse gas emissions—our descendants might even get a freak January in New York when average temperatures actually fall below 40 F. And they’ll call it a cold snap”

In the late 80’s they predicted temperatures would keep rising and they were right, for 9 years. They have been wrong for the subsequent 17 but that has not dampened enthusiasm for the original prediction.

The prediction of ‘polar amplification’ (which is not based, as far as I can tell, on physics) was a knee-jerk response to the spectacular failure of the prediction of a tropical hotspot at 8-16 km altitude as per Al Gore’s mendacious movie. They are still fudging (even in AR5) the fact that it is missing by pretending the data is not clear enough to tell. So the polar thing is half right – it did warm in the Arctic but cooled in the Antarctic (on land anyway – hence the need to lie about it on the cover of Nature). Increase ice in the East of Antarctica and all time global record cold (during Fall, no less) is undermining the value of the ‘correct half’ of that thumb-suck.

From what I have seen, climate models seem to have been tuned to replicate the rise in temperatures from 1970-1998 and pretty much assume that ALL of the warming is due to CO2. They call that validation???? They need to be able to completely model the CET thermometer data over the past 200 years. And the models should be able to replicate the MWP and LIA (and NOT the MANN version either).

Taphonomic says:
March 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm
From the report:
“Extreme weather is not just an abstract concept. It is a reality that affects people across the country. In 2013, two out of three Americans said weather in the U.S. has been worse over the past several years, up 12 percentage points since spring 2012. Many (51%) say weather in their local area has been worse over the past several years. Not surprisingly, then, the gap between what we know as scientists (that global warming impacts are here and now) and what Americans perceive is narrowing: about six in 10 Americans already say, “global warming is affecting weather in the U.S.””

So anecdotal evidence is now considered valid science? And 51% qualifies as many?

If Arctic/Polar amplification from melted ice were a legit climate change pattern, responsible for this years extreme cold, we should have seen a couple of things.
1. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, when there was real global warming and it was much greater at the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, along with melting ice, there should have been some evidence of it. In contrast, the weather at mid latitudes in most Winters was also milder during those years.
2. The ice hit it’s low point in 2012, when it spiked much lower. If there ever was a year for this phenomena to be present, that was it.
3. The ice made substantial gains in 2013. Not recovered completely of course but made gains. This would seem to make the occurrence of this phenomena seem less likely but exactly the opposite happened, the Polar Vortex dropped south many times.
4. This is the same pattern that we saw numerous times in the 1970’s when the US was hit with several frigid Winters…….the Polar Vortex dropping far south.
5. The PDO was negative in the 1970’s, we saw global cooling and the Polar Vortex dropped extremely far south numerous times during several Winters. The PDO went positive until around a decade ago and we saw global warming and the Polar Vortex rarely displayed this type of behavior. Then the PDO went negative around a decade ago, the warming stopped, the snow increased and now we have the Polar Vortex dropping way south again.

Correlation is with PDO. When it’s negative, we have cold Winters and the Polar Vortex drops south. When it’s positive, just the opposite.
Correlation is inverse, the opposite of sign of ice in the Arctic and claimed effect by warmists…….when ice decreases, we see it less. When ice increases or is greater, we see it more.

There is no correlation with CO2, since CO2 has gone up every year and this effect comes and goes independent of CO2. It’s based on a natural cycle.that appears to match up nicely with the PDO.

They do fear an abrupt change of climate.
In this they are refreshingly correct.
Just for the wrong reasons.
That climate has already changed in Australia, it is in transition here in Canada and I expect an abrupt change in the USA late in 2014.
An abused and impoverished electorate can be very quick to change how it treats state funded parasites.

“Correlation is inverse, the opposite of sign of ice in the Arctic and claimed effect by warmists…….when ice decreases, we see it less. When ice increases or is greater, we see it more.”

Sorry, that wasn’t very clear.]
Correlation is the opposite of claimed correlation(claim is that less ice/warmer Arctic causes a weaker jet stream, resulting in the Polar Vortex being displaced south)

Reality is that when ice decreased and Arctic warmed the most we did not see any sign of this pattern. Reality is that the Polar Vortex dropped south much more frequently back in the 1970’s when there was MORE ice.

This pattern got so much coverage, only AFTER the Polar Vortex dropped south this year and it was then blamed on global warming, just as the increase of Winter snow in the Northern Hemisphere got blamed on global warming AFTER snow increased.

Speaking of “what we know,” do you people know that “A panel of 13 U.S. climate scientists, including oceanographers, ecologists and public health experts, worked with Climate Nexus, a communications nonprofit, to produce the succinct report and a website”?

This is how I parsed it:
“What We Know,” is more an account of what climate scientologists thought they knew about a decade ago, before they downgraded climate “sensitivity” and started churning out a plethora of elliptic explanations in a desperate effort to circumscribe the failure of their modeled warming predictions.

If that doesn’t work for you, try:
“What We Know,” is more an account of what climate scientologists thought they knew about a decade ago, when they stopped shrieking about declining snowfalls and thermageddon and changed their tune to “extreme weather.”

Taylor on Forbes once set out 4 requirements, all of which must be met, for AGW assertions to be accepted:
1. Warming must be occurring, and be serious
2. Mankind must be substantially to blame
3. Mitigation must be feasible
4. The cost of mitigation must be less than the probable cost of adaptation.

@ Brian H,
That is an excellent list.The evidence suggests on each of those points:
1. Warming must be occurring, and be serious
Warming has been trivial, and the results have been in no trends that are historically unusual or dangerous.
2. Mankind must be substantially to blame
The real question is “blame for what?” Since the effects have been trivial, the concept of ‘blame’ is of little importance in any objective sense.
3. Mitigation must be feasible
Not one mitigation idea pushed by the AGW movement has worked. Political ideas, like treaties, are abject failures. Technical ideas, like wind power, do not work. The two ideas that could work are nuclear power and turning off the world’s economies to a subsistence level. Nuclear poser is not acceptable to most greens, and ending the age of technology is not acceptable to sane people.
4. The cost of mitigation must be less than the probable cost of adaptation.
The cost of mitigation, since it is does not exist is in effect infinite. Adaptation to a climate whose rate of change is trivially different, if at all, to pre-CO2 obsessed periods of history is the only way forward. If what we are after is a progressive society that creates opportunity and prosperity to grow.

AAAS “There are many such models and all of them have been validated, to varying degrees, by their ability to replicate past climate changes.”

No, No, No, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
This is one of the biggest climate change false statements.
More correctly, most model validation has been attempted on climate change assumptions as already modelled by climate change modellers.

example. If you are validating a model of a past temperature time series, you must validate against the raw data record. It is false and contra-logical to try to validate against an adjusted data record. If you try, you are not validating a past climate, you are validating the merits of a synthetic adjustment. The logic of course extends way beyond this simple example of temperature adjustments.

real life simple example. If you are modelling the grade of ore thought to exist between sparse drill hole assays, you do not ‘adjust’ your inconvenient or missing assays to produce a better starting set that is easier on the stats (although this is sometimes done with disclosure when nugget effects are severe). You do not ignore perturbing variables (like aerosols) such as an analytical chemistry interference of the abundance of one chemical on another (like too much iron and the copper can analyse high).

The thing is, there is no non-criminal upside to adjusting data when modelling an ore deposit. It is easier to forecast using the proper figures than it is to go to the trouble of working with synthetic figures known to be suspect. If you fiddle figures up you can go to jail, if you fiddle them down you can go broke.

It’s finally about accountability for being wrong, an outcome seldom admitted as possible in the climate business.. Did you hear the story of the climate change worker who was caught fiddling the books?